Hoop dreams now reality

Only 18 hours earlier, Chad Jassman was sitting in London and basking in the glow of a gold-medal winning performance.

As he stepped off the plane at the Calgary International Airport, he didn’t know if the exploits of him and his teammates on the Canadian wheelchair basketball team had resonated back home.

But when he stepped through the gates at international arrivals and saw the crowd of fans cheering wildly, Jassman realized word of his team’s accomplishments had certainly made its way across the Atlantic.

“It’s awesome seeing the fans go a little crazy when you came out,” Jassman said.

“I had no idea there’d be people waiting. It was interesting to see. People in England really cared about it and seeing all the people on the plane, so many people came up and said they’d watched the game.

“It’s cool that the Paralympics are getting attention from the media and stuff like that.”

Jassman has lots of reasons to be smiling these days. On Saturday, the Canadian men’s team avenged their defeat from the 2008 Beijing Paralympics gold-medal game, defeating Australia 64-58.

Jassman wasn’t around for the ’08 Paralympics, but he said he couldn’t have asked for a better experience than the one he had in London.

“You can’t ask for more than winning the gold, going undefeated,” Jassman said.

“I’m elated. It’s just sinking in, it’s not something that many people are ever going to accomplish in their life, and yeah, I’m definitely proud of what I’ve done.”

Canada’s Paralympians fell short of the top-eight finish in the gold-medal standings, which was set as an objective by the Canadian Paralympic Committee — Canada finished with seven golds — but Jassman said he was proud of the country’s efforts and hadn’t been able to follow many of the other sports while he was in London.

“I know we did well in a lot of the other sports, and we did really well in wheelchair basketball, so we’re too busy to worry about the rest,” Jassman said.